Chapter 4 THE BEGINNING OF YUKON

No more wonderful system of navigation probably exists on the globe than that of the inland passage between Puget Sound and the Lynn Canal, at the head of which are the towns of Skagway and Dyea, the respective ports of the White and the Chilkoot Passes. For ten hundred miles the steamers plying along this route run behind the great barrier of islands, beginning with that of Vancouver and ending at Point Deception. In summer the trip is grand beyond compare; in winter it is full of gloom and awe.

As the ship travels northward the mountains grow greater, the narrow passages narrower, till they develop as canyons, cut only by other canyon-like passages to the sea, or by glacier-ridden valleys from the mainland, whose mighty burdens shimmer in the sunlight as they yield in torrents tributes to the parent ocean. In summer continuous light reigns in the latitude of Skagway, and the traveller entering this weird zone is moved by its uncanny beauty.

Winter was still on the land as the Aleutian ploughed her way northward, and the passengers saw the great walls of rock uplifting to the clammy mantle of low-lying clouds. Here and there Indian villages were passed and Indian graveyards, with flags flying from the stagings, raised six or eight feet from the ground, on which reposed the deceased.

The ship called at Wrangle and unloaded freight and passengers. "This town had a boom during the excitement of the Cassiar twenty years back," remarked Hugh Spencer to Berwick and Bruce, as the three stood on the deck and watched the bustle between the steamer and the wharf.

"Let's stretch our legs up the quay," said George. They went ashore. Squaws were sitting with baskets of their handiwork before them, doing a lively trade with the disembarked passengers. The sales made were mostly of moccasins in beads, and bark canoes adorned with porcupine quills of brightest colours. Hugh stopped before an old squaw and picked up a pair of large mittens with gauntlet attachments. They were made of canvas and lined with red flannel.

"How much?" he inquired.

"Dollar two bits."

"Give you six bits."

"All right."

"Better take a couple of pair each, fellows; there's nothing like them for the trail: look how big the thumbs are." So Hugh and his two companions bought the whole of the squaw's store.

"There's nobody knows how to make mitts for real cold weather like the Siwash. They make the thumbs good and big, so as not to stop circulation; and we'll have some cold weather yet before we get over the summit. But you have to beat the beggars down, as they always ask twice as much as they expect to get. Here we paid only seventy-five cents a pair for these mitts, and the squaw said she wanted a dollar and a quarter for them."

"Are these Siwash[1] Indians?" inquired John.

[1] Corruption of the French sauvage.

"Well, we call them Siwashes; but they don't like it. The real Siwash lives farther south, and the name, I believe, is one of contempt."

"They are different Indians from any I have seen on the plains," said John.

"Oh, yes, very different. I guess their only resemblance is that they are both good only when they are dead."

"You're pretty hard on them," was the remark of the good-natured John.

"Perhaps I am. You see, a tough outfit has been trading up here for years from down the coast; and before that the Russians were here-and they didn't put in most of their time building churches. They found a dollar's worth of hootch would get more from the savages than a dollar's worth of anything else; so they used whisky. The savage, when you find him without the cussedness taught by the white man, makes a pretty good citizen. He may be lazy, but he is honest; and perhaps his laziness is only due to the fact that he has always had a klootch[2] to do chores around, and has never been trained to the white man's ways of working; but let any fellow try following an Indian on snow-shoes for a couple of days, and his ideas soon change. He is not much good with a pick and shovel for sure; but he is A1 on the trail. Another thing about the Indian is that when one has grub they all have grub. This is the way of the Stick Indians inside, and you can cache your grub in their country or leave the things lying around, and they won't touch them."

[2] Squaw.

During the rest of the day John and his mates were in the company of Hugh Spencer, listening to his tales of Yukon life: the glories of the summer there, and the great cold of the winter, with the resources of the miners to keep from despair. He told them the traditions of the camps, and how the discoveries of '49 in California had been followed by others in Oregon, British Columbia, the Fort Steele district (Wild Horse Creek), Kettle River, Caribou, and, finally, in the Yukon.

"It wasn't a miner who was the first finder of gold in the Yukon; it was a missionary. But the missionary did not follow up this discovery, which makes a difference. However, I'll tell you the story, and it will let you see a little of Siwash nature in the telling of it.

"The Rev. Robert Macdonald, Doctor of Divinity and Archdeacon of MacKenzie River, was the first white man to find gold in the Yukon. Say! I ain't got much use for missionaries as a general proposition, but Archdeacon Macdonald is as white a man as ever lived, though he is east of the Rocky Mountains now. I guess the reason I don't like missionaries is that you can never do anything with the Siwashes, once a missionary gets hold of them.

"Well, the Archdeacon-he wasn't Archdeacon then though-drifted down the Porcupine, and took up his residence with the Hudson Bay Company people at Fort Yukon in the year 1862, which was a few years before I was born. You see the Hudson Bay people established themselves at Fort Yukon in 1847. In 1842 Mr. J. Bell, in charge of the Hudson Bay Post on the Peel River, which runs into the MacKenzie, from beyond the divide from the head waters of the Porcupine, crossed over and went down the Porcupine a way. In 1846 he followed it to its mouth, and saw the Yukon. In the following year Mr. A. H. Murray built Fort Yukon, and set up business. Well, it was here that the Archdeacon started to tell the savages of the Great Spirit-and they were mighty interested.

"The savages had some sort of a tradition that a certain canyon, which opened into the Yukon a short distance up stream from the Fort, was the home of bad spirits; they could hear them groaning, and they asked the missionary to 'put them wise.'[3] So when a bunch[4] arrived, one day in July 1863, he trotted the whole outfit off to the canyon.

[3] Inform them.

[4] Bunch-Party.

"Of course the missionary found the noises were caused by the wind or nothing, but, as the Siwashes said there were noises up the Creek, he said it was the wind.

"Walking along the shore, the Archdeacon saw a bit of something shining in the gravel and picked it up. It was a flake of gold sticking to a piece of mica, of which there's lots in the Klondike country-mica schist the scientists call it. So this was the first find of gold by a white man; but the Company was not looking for gold-hunters in their country, so the discovery was never followed up.

"The Siwash is A1 at asking questions-just about as bad as a six-year-old kid; and if a medicine man comes among them it is surprising what sort of conundrums they will bring him."

In this way John Berwick and his old-time mining-mate pleasantly passed the hours listening to the conversation of Spencer, by whom they were attracted.

On the third evening, at dinner-the three being seated together-they noticed some movement beginning amongst those of the company who were seated near the companion-way. Several were seen to rise and hurry away. Quickly the excitement spread, the saloon was soon empty of most of its feasters.

"Keep your seats, fellows; it's only some chechacho got the toothache," said Hugh. Shouts were heard, with a trampling and rush of feet on the upper deck. "The only thing that could happen-outside of fire-would be to run ashore or hit an iceberg. We are hardly far enough north for the icebergs yet-besides, if we had hit one, or run ashore, we should know it. If we caught fire, it would not be far to the shore anywhere along this route; and it is always well not to get stampeded in any case."

After dinner the friends entered the main saloon, and found groups of men talking excitedly, with others returning from the upper deck where the life-boats were stored. To the upper deck they went, and there they found Mr. Muggsley.

"I tell you, gentlemen, no officer or anybody else is going to keep me from the life-boats when a ship is sinking. I don't care for anybody! You stand by and let the officers and sailors run things-and they will fill the boats with women and their own friends-and look out for themselves. But I look out for John Muggsley! Big John Muggsley the boys call me! And it's a case like this that makes me glad I'm big and strong."

An excitable coal-heaver had found a stream of water entering by a sea-cock, which had been left open through carelessness; and, running up through the saloon to the boats, had started the excitement. Such trivial circumstances often cause most disastrous panics; and likewise tell tales of how certain men are made!

The ship eventually-after blinding snowstorms-entered Gastineau Channel. To the left was the great line of stamp mills pounding out the wealth of the mighty Treadwell quartz deposits on Douglas Island; to the right was the pioneer town of Juneau, with its gambling-halls and saloons enjoying the licence of the Alaska mining-camp.

The next stop for the ship was Skagway, where the sea journey would end on the morrow. The passengers were alert and astir. From then on it was to be a struggle.

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